1.
Legal
a.
Legal
Rights of Androids/Chimera. Extension of ‘Common Benefits’ to Common Humanity [ajl]
b.
Metaphysics
of Androids/Chimera.
2.
Religious
a.
Metaphysics
i.
“I
explore this question as both an ethical and metaphysical problem. I take
Friedrich Nietzsche’s point to be germane, hat essence, or being, is an empty
abstraction from life and from life’s joys. Having inherited a metaphysic of
being, we are unsure of what to do with our freedom, including the freedom to
create chimeras. Augustine, set the course: because humans are being and not
becoming, freedom can only mean free to do because we will what our essence was
created to be in the divine blue-print. Freedom is reserved for God alone. To
suggest otherwise is to suggest that God lacks something, because a truly free
being cannot be determined and therefore has an open and unknowable future. A
theology of essence denies human freedom; therefore, the creation of
destructive technologies [is] only putatively born of the human mind and [is]
in actuality born of God. The problem of God in a post-human world is, once
again, the problem of evil.” [pp p.
1]
ii.
“The
sort of theology I would like to do, takes seriously the linear, possibly
multi-linear, thinking evolutionary theory has given us and cannot claim any
post factor pure ontological distinction. We are becoming and evolving, as such
we have real ethical responsibilities which we cannot evade.” [pp p. 2]
iii.
“My
proposal, in brief, is that we understand semiotic machines (whether human or
not) as contributing toward what God values as sacred on a continuum . . . What
may be judged in the end is not the empty abstractness of essence or being, but
the concrete actuality, new in very instance and made continuous not by any
memory bank or hard-drive, but by its contribution to God’s enjoyment.” [pp p. 5]
iv.
“.
. . we can look forward to one day treating conscious computers like people.” [d]
b.
Ethics—“Christianity
cannot be supposed adequate unless it offers constructive, ethical guidelines
for the use and integration of chimeras into our society.” [pp p.
3]
3.
Natural-Secular-NeoPragmatism
[afd]
a.
In
the science-fiction novel by Philip K. Dick, Do Androids Dream of Electric
Sheep? (Blade Runner, the movie), androids sometimes escape slavery
and need to be detected by a psychological test for empathy, the only human
trait they lack. “The meaning of being human is [also] largely revealed in the
history and future of the human-android-pet relationships (where religion,
incidentally, is yet another subtheme of the novel seen in the struggle between
Buster Friendly, a mindless continual TV show and Mercerism, a mindless
religion based on an over inflated empathy via mind-meld empathy boxes, which
among other things shows that a good thing, empathy, can be absurd when taken
to extremes).”
b.
“To
make the android humanlike, we must investigate human activity from the
standpoint of [cognitive science, behavioral science and neuroscience], and to
evaluate human activity, we need to implement processes that support it in the
android.” [i]
c.
“Systems
theory suggests that change and choice are dependent on having a certain amount
of instability, of abandoning rigid ways of thinking and being. It thus, at least metaphorically, supports a
Heraclitean and postmodern social theoretical view of the inherent importance
of change, and thus, the ability to think flexibly and creatively and make
choices. The discourse of change is an essential part of emancipation, of
establishing an open society. But the essential source of change comes from
within (self-organization, in systems language, including options for creative
change). These conditions of
flexibility best flourish with a great deal of personal courage in the face of
our existential-cyborgian anxiety, and often despite conditions of inequality
and oppression in a society.” [afd
pp. 255-256]
d.
“What
then about intelligent life that can self-reflect and even transcend our
limited consciousness? Humans have indeed come forth in our manifest cosmos.
And humans, as evolving life forms and cultures, are surely not finished. How
might we personally develop; how might life forms evolve? At this dangerous
crossroads for planet Earth and our own individual futures, how can we better
live for ourselves and for all of creation, while manifesting the underlying
beauty of a cosmos that holds the mysteries of life? Perhaps everyday
creativity can help show us the way.” [r
p. 314]
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[afd]
Amestoy,
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Baker
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[i]
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[j]
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1 February 2009; updated 4 February 2009